Smell My Arm

On Friday morning, I took my kids to the lotion store in the mall where earlier in the week I had purchased five steeply discounted items but mysteriously only made it home with four. While I explained the situation to the cashier, my three older children got high on the noxious fumes of fruit-scented body spray. While the cashier searched the store's lost and found for my missing lotion, Cortlen tugged on my shirtsleeve. A quick glance confirmed that 100% of my son's exposed skin was covered with various shades of scented slime.

"Smell my arm," he commanded, sticking his greasy and extremely fragrant appendage in my face. He explained that while I had been talking to the cashier, he had been systematically testing every lotion on display. His left arm represented the entirety of the store's inventory.

While Cortlen was busy with his task, Kellen had taken up one of his own. I found him at the store's display sink, trying out a dozen foaming hand soaps one at a time.

"Hey!" he whined when I turned off the faucet. "I have seven more to go!"

"Let's go," I said.
"But my hands are all soapy!" he cried.

I made all of my children roll around on the small patch of grass growing outside the front doors of Macy's before getting into the car. No one asked the reason for my request because they already knew.


Like dogs and large woodland mammals, we are often overcome by necessity to leave our scent on the places we visit.

****
Any pint-sized lotion lovers out there?

Manna at the Mall

My local mall is among the best in the nation. When the main department store went out of business last year, many of the chain retail stores decided not to renew their leases. As is stands now, half of the small stores are empty; the other half are dedicated to selling knock-off purses and big & tall tracksuits. To restore some dignity to the city's flagship shopping center, the mall owners recently installed two dozen kiosks, many of which take the shape of covered wagons.

According to the mall information board, these kiosks "bring excitement back to shopping" by offering "a wide range of innovative products and services not available in traditional retail establishments." Included among the novelties is a woman who will thread your eyebrows for $10 and a bearded man who hands out religious pamphlets and sells bansai trees for the bargain price of $25 a pop. Looking for a synthetic hairpiece or a homemade heating pad filled with rice? You'll find those wagons directly across from the food court.


While traditional brick and mortar store employees are prohibited from soliciting sales until the customer is physically inside their store, kiosk vendors benefit from fuzzy property lines. I've learned from experience that if you don't hug the walls and pretend to talk on your cell phone as you pass by, you will be stopped in your tracks by a person wanting you to do them a favor in the form of sniffing a piece of perfumed paper or accepting a squirt of organic lotion made from figs.

By far the most aggressive kiosk salesperson in my mall is the man who hands out free red balloons to children in hopes of guilting their mothers into buying kitchen cabinets by the square foot.

"They're just balloons, Miss," barked the man, at my polite refusal of his gifts.
"I want a balloon!" whined my daughter.
"Not today," I said, pushing my offspring down the aisle.
"Why can't we get one?" cried my son.
"Yeah," yelled the man after me. "Why can't they have one?"
We kept walking. In a last-ditch attempt to woo me into dropping $10,000 on a spur-of-the moment kitchen remodel, the man screamed, "If you buy today, I can get you 50% off!"

As much as I would have liked to stay and talk to the nice salesman, I was forced to focus my attention on the two children who were on the brink of hysterics over their lost opportunity to own a piece of latex taped to a stick.

"We are not getting balloons today," I said firmly. "Don't ask again."

Before anyone could lament their horrible fate of having me as their mother, my other son noticed something spectacular out of the corner of his eye. Much to everyone's amazement, wonder, shock, and surprise, there were three red balloons--sticks still attached--protruding from a trash can just outside of J.C. Penney.



God was smiling down on them. Like the Israelites, escaping from Egypt, God provided a way for His people to be fed while traveling to the promised land. In the wilderness of the Philadelphia mall, my children did not find manna, but just the right number of red balloons to make everyone happy.

*****
What's YOUR favorite kiosk at the mall? Please tell me there are other malls that sell hairpieces...please.

Work Clothes

Last January, I bought a closet full of dry clean only work clothes for the three college professor jobs that I had just been offered and desperately wanted... but would turn down a few weeks later (because I was pregnant).

I have finally gotten to the point where I can look at the clothes without wanting to throw myself off the balcony. My husband says I'm being dramatic.

"Get over yourself," he told me the other day.

The nerve.

Once I calmed down, I realized that my husband had a point: a lot of very stylish professor wear was going to waste simply because I felt sorry for myself. What lifted me out of the depths of depression was the knowledge that as a stay-at-home mom, my home is my office. Moreover, if I am to truly embrace the idea of working at home, I need to dress appropriately.

Yesterday, I wore my Ann Taylor interview suit to the grocery store. I learned two things from the experience:

1. Dressing nicely doesn't always make you feel good about yourself. I felt more alienated from the processed cheese and imitation crab meat than usual.

2. People weirdly and unfairly expect you to act how you look. No one bats an eye when I'm wearing sweatpants and deposit a loaf of bread in the cereal aisle. For some reason, heels makes it tacky.

My Sincerest Apologies

Current weather in Philadelphia: 32 degrees and snowing

Before I had children, I was very critical of women who walked around the mall with a trail of hobos following along behind them.

"How hard is it to dress your kids in matching/unstained/seasonally appropriate clothing?" I asked myself.

Now that I know the answer to that question, I feel terrible for judging.

Moms of America: I'm sorry.

I know from experience that you aren't child neglecters, but like me, have simply lost the will to live.

Adopted!

I have three siblings who are adopted from Korea, including my sister Amy, who has been visiting for the past 2 weeks. I don't even think about the physical differences between me and my sister, but I am reminded of them when people cock their heads and wrinkle their foreheads when I introduce Amy as my sister.

On Friday, my sister and I took the crew to the mall in an attempt to do the impossible: buy my daughter a pair of jeans. While I rocked in the fetal position in the corner of the girls' dressing room in J.C. Penney, my sister took Kellen and Cortlen to Bath and Body Works, where she challenged them to slather their bodies with over 50 different samples of scented lotion. At some point during the activity, a store clerk approached Cortlen and asked if he needed any help. Holding up a tube of Country Apple, my son replied, "This lotion is making me hungry. I want it."

The store clerk looked at Kellen and Cortlen and then at Amy.

"Why don't you ask your...um..er.." The store clerk struggled to find the right relationship between an Asian woman and two nearly albino boys.

"Mother!" my sister helped. She pointed to the boys and smiled. "They're adopted," she explained.

We Buy Gold

Several months ago, a good friend of mine gave me the gold wedding band that she wore during her two week marriage to a compulsive liar/con artist. I told her that I would get rid of the ring for her, as long as I could use the money from its sale to purchase frozen ice cream cakes and Yumster donut holes. She said my plan seemed appropriate.

My delay in selling the ring until last week was not due to a lack of options. In fact, there are several reputable jewelry stores in my area that either buy heirloom jewelry outright, or sell it on consignment. For some reason, however, selling the ring to Zales didn't seem right: a ring with that kind of history, I believed, belonged somewhere more classy and refined than in a mall jewelry store.

Last week, I found such an establishment in a strip mall next to Chuck-E-Cheese. Hanging above the storefront was a large red banner than read simply "We Buy Gold." Upon entering the store, my children and I were greeted by a middle-aged man seated at a card table. The remaining 1998 square feet of store space was completely empty, save several cardboard boxes huddled against the back corner and an abundant supply of electrical wires protruding from the walls, floor, and ceiling.

"You are in the process of renovating?" I assumed.
"No," replied the man in a thick accent, patting the card table. "This is all I need."
"I like a man who gets right down to business," I said.

The man ignored me and held out his hand. I handed him the ring.
My kids watched intently as the man produced a small arsenal of squeegee bottles and eyedroppers from a shoebox underneath his chair. After dropping several chemicals onto the ring, the man examined the ring with a magnifying glass. He was very nice to let my kids examine the ring too.

"Can I drop some of that stuff onto the ring?" asked Camber, pointing at the bottles of acid.
The man put an arm protectively around the chemicals.
"These are expensive," he said.
"And deadly," I added.

After putting the chemicals away, the man put the ring on a small scale. His eyebrows furrowed when he read the results.

"The scale says $44," he told me, "But for you, I will pay $50."

It took me a minute to mentally calculate how many donut holes this would purchase. After determining that the number was satisfactory, I told the man that we had a deal.

After tossing the ring into a Ziploc bag filled with bangle bracelets and a number of handsome gold nugget rings, the man pulled a $50 bill out of his pocket and handed it to me. He then ripped a piece of college-ruled paper out of a notebook and wrote two things on it:

9/19/08
Ring

Sliding the paper across the table he said, "I need your signature...for tax purposes."

As I scrawled my name, I felt relieved to know that Uncle Sam was going to get his cut of the sale of the ring. The appearance of the store had made me initially question the legality of the transaction, but I was glad to learn that my concerns were completely unfounded.

As we left "We Buy Gold," the $50 bill began to burn a hole in my pocket. My friend was getting off work in an hour, and we needed to move quickly if we expected to make all of our purchases before she got home.

There was another reason for my urgency: I had a gut feeling that "We Buy Gold" might not be open for business much longer and I had a bunch of gold chains and one large nugget ring that I was anxious to trade in for a dozen creme-filled eclairs.